Sunday, January 22, 2017

Life got in the way!

Almost five years have passed since I last posted in my blog. So many things have happened. We moved from New England to South Carolina in November 2012. We settled into a new house, along with my mom, and began to adjust to a new way of living. We were no longer traveling the winding hills of our small Connecticut town. We were travelling on the flat and multilane roads just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Instead of watching herds of turkey and deer from our back window, we were standing on our front porch and looking at egrets take flight from the marsh that is across from the street. The grocery store is less than a mile away, instead of six miles. There is no snow, no ice, no bitter cold. There is rain, and heat, and thunderstorms that shake the house. The ants don't invade the house the way the did every Spring, but termites do, and we had massive repairs to the house shortly after we moved in. The beach and downtown Charleston are less than ten minutes away. Two hospitals can be reached in less than ten minutes.

Along with settling into a new home, in a new state, my husband and I settled into life with my mom. I knew that mom was having some difficulty before we moved. Nothing extraordinary, a few bounced checks and a few falls, and she had given up driving. We found a house that was handicapped accessible and had two master bedrooms. Mom and I settled into activities that we both enjoyed, chorus, painting, lectures and movies, mostly at our Senior Center on James Island. Over the next few years her mental and physical abilities began to diminish. She couldn't tell time, and could no longer differentiate night and day. She needed help getting in and out of chairs. After two hospital stays we made the difficult decision, with aid and encouragement from my older brother and sister, to move mom to an Alzheimer's Care facility this past September.

Mom is settling in well. She will be 98 in April. I visit her daily, and have the afternoon as my own. My craft room has been hauled out and weeded out. I have beading that I need to finish, and of course share. I have places to go, and things I would like to do. I hope you enjoy the things I will be working on....I have a lot of catching up to do!